


Twin Size Mattress

by degradedpsychotic



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Homophobia, M/M, Self-Harm, Threeshot, eren/historia is actually a v small part of this ok, older but not wiser, there's gonna be smut too don't worry, tiny towns run by homophobic priests
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-04-08 17:29:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4313988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/degradedpsychotic/pseuds/degradedpsychotic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A three-part tale of two men separated by nineteen years of hate and uncertainty that wonder if True Love exists outside of Disney movies.</p><p>Homophobic Language and Self-Harm. Explicit sex in chapter 2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Twin

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I fully blame [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWJUk65EnQM) and my own anxieties for this fic that got wildly out of hand.
> 
> i have a [tumblr](http://www.apljooce.tumblr.com)

Jean and I had been dating for three years.

Had been.

We're obviously not, now.

The whole thing had started one tragic Valentine’s day during our freshman year of high school where I had received an anonymous love confession (typed in fucking MLA format, I might add) and Jean had proposed to me with a half-wilted rose and a smashed Three Musketeers. I had said yes, and the awkwardness of two boys not quite through puberty yet resulted in us being awkward, sweating like the virgins we were when we so much as _held hands_. We didn’t have our first kiss until halfway through sophomore year, when I had been crying over frustration at _math homework_ and Jean had leaned across the scatter of papers and calculators on my bedroom floor to kiss me softly before he offered to tutor me.

The tutoring was half serious, half trying out the kisses we had discovered that we had actually enjoyed greatly. Junior year rolled around and during a particularly heaving session of kissing, Jean’s hand had fallen into my lap and we had shot apart like polar-similar magnets forced to touch. Senior year, two weeks before finals and our graduation on a muggy Friday, he did the same thing, but kept it there.

His father had walked in on us, wondering why Jean hadn’t hear him call us down for dinner.

I was sent home early after some sharp-edged comment about me _poisoning_ their son into becoming a faggot. A sinner. A dirty fucking devil.

I didn’t see him all weekend. He never answered my phone calls, and the one time I had actually gone over and knocked on his door, his mother had threatened to call the police on me for trespassing.

Four in the morning on that Monday, just hours before my Garfield alarm clock would have rung to get me out of my bed, the phone on the wall just outside of my bedroom rang. I had ran out to get it in blind concern, my sleep-clouded mind immediately jumping to apocalyptic conclusions. Death, disease, Y2K had come early and we're all doomed and Jean was the first casualty.

I wasn’t far off.

As soon as I had slurred a hello, Hitch was breathing heavy in my ear. “Is this Marco?”

“Yeah,” I grunted, leaning against the wall as I tried to catch up. Why was Hitch calling at four in the morning? Why was Hitch calling _at all_?

“Marco, shit, they’re sending him off—“

I just made a questioning noise, not even awake enough to process.

“Marco, _they’re sending Jean away._ Some fucking—Some _reform_ camp or something in Texas. They’re fighting right now—Shit, Marco, you need to come over here. You can’t let them do this, and they won’t listen to me—“

I had slammed the phone back into its cradle and ran out the door in nothing but my Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles pajama pants and a Hanes white t-shirt and bare feet.

Jean lived three blocks down from me. A short walk usually, but that night, with the sun not even above the horizon yet, it felt like it took me years. My legs burned, my breaths came out in labored coughs, and I didn’t know I was crying until I sprinted past the church that our tiny little town in the middle of West Virginia worshipped around the clock.

When I got there, it was to see a black sedan pulling out of the driveway and Hitch screaming at the doorstep, being restrained by her tight-lipped mother.

I didn’t stop running.

I ran after the car like my damn life depended on it, but if you’ve ever tried to run after a car, you know it’s useless. I was inhaling exhaust and dust from the street and Jean didn’t even see me because I could see his head pressed against the window, eyes screwed shut in submission.

I haven’t heard from him since May eighteenth, 1996.

It’s been nineteen years.

I’m a graduate of a state university, my hair already sprouting bits of gray because it’s a degree in accounting (my parents _insisted_ ) and I’ve never been good at math. I have a moderately good job in the same tiny town I grew up in, working as a desk slave ( _office aid_ was my official title) at the local veterinary clinic. Taking calls about people wondering why their dog was shitting and vomiting uncontrollably, why Mr. Shadis couldn’t keep his horses in their fucking pen, no we can’t come kill the angry raccoon under your porch, yada yada yada…

I want to throw myself off a cliff on a daily business.

I work with a man just a year younger than me that’s been through vet school and all that other bullshit. His dad’s the only doctor in town, so I guess he picked it up from him. His name’s Eren, and he’s like a cat whisperer or something. He’s kind of an asshole, too, but his company is a lot better than the old woman that employs and pays us both.

(She volunteers part-time at the church giving speeches on Sunday mornings to children to brain wash them about never trusting faggots because you'll die and go to hell.)

I still live with my parents, mostly because I’m trying to save up money to move out of this town, out of West Virgina, somewhere that has more for me. Somewhere that won’t take my heart away from me.

Yes, I do think of him every day.

Yes, I do remember the look of utter _fear_ on his face when his father had opened that door.

I also remember the rose that I had dried on my ceiling and still had in a shoebox in my closet, buried under other things.

I still remember the bitter taste of a smashed Three Musketeers bar.

But it’s not painful anymore. I know that by now, he’s moved on. He had to have moved on.

Hitch went to college and left town to try to make it big in the theatre business ten years ago, and the Kirchstein household is now a dusty home for two elderly parents that still drag themselves to church on a daily basis like decrepit old zombies out after the brains of open-minded people. They don’t seem to be bothered by the fact that their son has been gone for two decades.

They are, however, still bothered by me. They ignore me, now, no longer shooting glares or looks of disgust. They no longer go out of their way to tell me I’m going to hell. No one really does. (People did for a few years, but they seemed to lose interest once I became a “successful college graduate”.)

That’s okay. I want nothing to do with them either.

I’m spacing out again, staring at a GAME OVER of solitare on my computer screen when Eren flops into the creaking office chair beside mine, letting out a loud groan. I glance over at him to see that his pastel green scrubs are now covered in black hair and _cat piss_ and his hands are covered in band-aids.

“Bad day?” I tease, closing my game and opening up the grid of the day’s appointments. “You’ve got an hour until the next one.”

“Sean’s a piece of shit,” he sighs in response, absently brushing the hair off of his scrubs. “Bean took it like a champ.”

“Shots, right?”

“Yeah. Two hundred bucks. Add another fifty for this shirt I’m gonna have to burn.”

I snort, pulling up the files and totaling the charges. “Can they even get them back in the carriers?”

“Probably not. I’m gonna go change, okay?”

“Yeah, sure.” I wave him off as he grabs an extra set of scrubs (this is a common occurrence) and he slips into the bathroom. Hanji approaches the counter after a few minutes, two grumpy cats in two hand-me-down carriers as they set them down on the floor to fish their wallet out of their pocket.

(Hanji is agender, and I only really like their weirdness because it pisses off everyone else in this hick town.)

I list off the price and after Hanji spends a moment chastising their cats for getting rabies, worms, and a whole grocery list of disgusting afflictions. They hand over their credit card and I handle the transaction, bidding them a plastic smile and a receipt as they leave.

I’m a thirty-seven year old man, single, sprouting gray hairs, and I still live with my aging parents, ready to kick them off to a nursing home soon and inherit the house in this teeny tiny hole of a town. I also have a ghost over my shoulder named Jean Kirchstein and it shouldn’t bother me, but I have no idea where he is and I’m scared.

I’m scared because Jean Kirchstein has been missing for longer than I ever knew him.

Pathetic, right?

Eren comes back as I boot up Solitare again, dropping his lunchbox beside my keyboard. He’s already devouring a ham sandwich when I realize it’s already past noon, and I let out a tiny groan at how slow the time seems to be going. The nine to five drag. True adulthood.

Eren swallows around a gargantuan bite as he pulls out his phone, beginning to text away. I scoff at him, teasing without much thought.

“Thanking the wife for packing you lunch?”

He snorts, bread still filling his cheeks as he keeps typing one-handed. “At least I _have_ a wife. Dude, you’re almost forty.”

The joke hits low, and I hide it behind a forced laugh. I stand up, crossing over to our small fridge to grab my own lunch.

“Seriously, Marco. I’m starting to wonder if all of those stories about you being gay for Kirchstein were true.”

I drop my paper bag lunch on the floor and my pudding cup explodes on the linoleum. I hear the squeak of the chair as Eren starts to turn and I pick everything up, tossing the cup in the trash and promising to clean up the butterscotch pudding after I eat. “Fingers slipped,” I mutter in an attempt at an excuse, plopping back into my chair and pulling out my cheese-and-tomato-on-rye and gnaw at in. I don’t make eye contact with Eren, but keep playing Solitare (and losing).

“Chill out, Marco. I was kidding,” he grumbles, taking another bite before he seems to get a _great_ idea. “Hey, Historia wants to put on a dinner party this Friday. She wants to show off the new dishes.” He rolls his eyes to save face, leaning back in the chair until it squeaks and threatens to topple. “You should come. She’s got a lot of bachelorette friends. We could hook you up.”

A dinner party with a bunch of single thirty-something women sounds like the opposite of what I want. But it’s something, and maybe Eren will drop the gay thing and my parents will drop the “that girl you kissed when you were two is nice so go propose” thing. So I sigh through my nose as I swallow, dragging a four of hearts onto a five of spades.

“Yeah, okay.”

“Sweet. Eat a light lunch. Historia’s lasagna feeds an army.”

I laugh and make mature, straight adult comments as we chat through lunch, but then Eren’s got back-to-back appointments with the Hoover’s Great Dane suffering from arthritis, the Wagner’s snake eating something too big (turns out Winston was Winnie and the Hoover son has dibs on the babies already), and the Springer’s dog having recently given birth to puppies that all need their shots. (Connie _insists_ that I should take one home because Sasha will literally start her own dog circus. I kind of say _maybe_.)

Five o’clock rolls around too late and I drive home, bumping through the too-familiar streets that I am too tired of seeing. I drive in a daze, it’s just so ingrained, but today I find myself passing my own house and going three blocks further down the street. I pull to the curb, and I’m sitting there staring at the Kirchstein household like a stalker on CSI.

There’s no one home. The garage door is cracked for the cat they got when Hitch moved out, to let her in while they’re out. The lights are out, the setting sun painting the white siding a dusky shade of orange. I can remember when I was seventeen, sitting around the grill and poking at hot dogs, sneaking quick pecks and nudges against his hand while his parents moved around inside. I remember lying on that lawn when we were fifteen and Jean told me all about the stars. I remember I asked him why he liked space so much, and he said because anywhere was better than Earth, even if it meant asphyxiating among stardust.

I remember running down this street and watching him leave my life.

It doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s just this weird itch that I can’t scratch. I know he’s missing, and I know there’s a spot there that he used to be, but I don’t feel the need to fill it with tears anymore. I just wonder what would happen if I saw him one day. If I would recognize him. I wonder if he’s missed me. I wonder where he is, how he’s doing. Is he married? Is it with a woman? Does he have a family?

The itch turns into a dull ache and I turn around in the neighbor’s driveway to head into my own.

The week goes by in a trudging blur, as it tends to. Business turns back to slow, and the biggest adventure of the week is that Eren got an emergency call to go to the Shadis farm to aid a horse in the birth of a new foal. Spring has sprung, and so have babies, apparently.

Friday rolls around and Eren steals half my lunch, announcing that I won’t need it, and I follow him home in my Buick. He quickly excuses himself to go change and I’m left to wander around the unfamiliar house in my khakis and polo uniform, peeking my head into a cramped kitchen to find Historia and a handful of woman laughing over wine.

Historia looks up when I awkwardly peek around the corner, waving. “Marco!” I’ve seen her before—She’s often come to stop by when Eren forgets his lunch, his scrubs, his mind… The usual. “Do you want some wine?”

Alcohol sounds fucking _amazing_ , so I take a glass and join the women perched at the island.

“Ymir, Annie, Mina, and I guess you already know Mikasa,” she introduces, and I nod at each of them in turn. Mikasa offers me a small wave with a few fingers that aren’t holding the stem of her glass. “Armin and Bertholdt are in the living room, if you prefer guy talk.”

I shrug, taking a sip of my wine and pulling a face at how sweet it is. “Depends on if they have alcohol.”

Ymir laughs, slapping my back so hard I almost choke on my wine. “Someone’s got his priorities in order! They don’t, though. They don’t like drinking.”

“They suck,” Annie deadpans, scowling into her empty glass until Historia refills it for her. The bottle is already empty. I watch as she moves back to the fridge and grabs another.

I quickly down the rest of my own, lips pursing at the taste. I wouldn’t say no to some rum, honestly.

Eren comes sweeping into the room, now in jeans and a t-shirt and horribly underdressed (the women are all in variations of spring dresses, but Ymir is in a low-cut top and cropped khakis) to peck a kiss on his wife’s cheek and peek into the oven.

“Twenty more minutes,” she recites, as if it’s common for Eren to be bouncing around like a child. No wonder they don’t have any of their own. Eren is enough of a child for both of them. “Why don’t you give Marco a tour?”

“Only if I get a refill,” I agree, and she laughs as she pops open the new bottle and pours some out for me, filling it up to the absolute rim with a wink.

The _tour_ doesn’t last long. Eren and Historia live in a small ranch-style home only about six hundred feet from the Shadis ranch. They have a bedroom, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a dining room, and a living room that Armin and Bertholdt are watching NBC News in, as adults do. There’s a small office that was obviously a second bedroom, but the fact that it’s an _office_ and not a nursery speaks volumes for their family ideals.

Nonetheless, by the time I’ve finished my second glass of wine and Eren is done ranting about how much work they needed to do on the house before the roof stopped leaking, dinner is served and I’m awkwardly seated between Mina and Ymir, the two single women of the night.

Mina, it turns out, is a very nice woman. She wears her black hair in pigtails in an attempt to regain youth that has left her with crows feet. I learn that she works at the local elementary school teaching first grade, but she’s also a Sunday School teacher, and that kind of puts her on the “no thanks” list.

Ymir, however, is drunk for some godforsaken reason and lavishing Historia with comments about “sinful lasagna”. I learn that she works as a mechanic at the only shop in town, and she’s better than the Braun family at pretty much everything. She’s happy being single, and she also apparently has a pet goat that Eren once castrated. She’s honestly more interesting to me than Mina, and it must be obvious, because Eren nudges me in the ribs while I’m helping him clear the table.

“You should ask her out. Take her to a bar. She’d love it.”

I shrug, dropping the scraped-clean lasagna pan into the soapy sink water. “She’s nice, but not really my type.”

Eren snorts, grabbing a well-worn sponge to attack the grime. “What is your type?”

Brown hair dyed blond in an undercut. Golden eyes that look like molten flecks of the sun. Snark and sarcasm that crumbles to gentle adoration and awkwardness in an instant. Flustered blushing, stuttering _I love you_.

My hesitation is not overlooked.

“Blondes? Brunettes? What?”

“Both,” I murmur, inviting myself to his fridge and the box of Miller. I crack open the can and start to sip at it, mostly just stalling.

“Redheads?” he tries with a grin, dropping dishes into the drying rack with little care. Laughter comes from the living room at a joke Ymir just made.

“Not really.”

He hums in thought, inspecting a fork that seems to be bent. “Hey… You don’t…”

I can see it coming a mile away. I take as much beer in my mouth as I can stand in hopes that the bitterness will distract me.

“You don’t _really_ like guys, do you?”

I pretend my flinch is from the disgusting booze. “Ugh, seriously? This beer’s disgusting.”

The fork clinks against its fellows as it’s placed in the drying rack and Eren turns to face me fully, suds up to his elbows and a furrow creasing his brow.

“Marco.”

“You should try Redd’s. It’s pretty good. A little sweet, but—“

“Marco.”

“It’s like hard cider or something. It—“

“ _Marco_.”

I bite my lip and taste blood. I should have never come here. I should have never stayed here past high school. Why couldn’t I have _left?_

He takes a breath through his nose, eyes darting to the hall that leads to the living room before he steps closer to me. I almost step back, but my belt loop hitches on one of the decorative knobs on the drawers.

“You’re gay.”

It’s a statement.

I throw my half-full can of beer into the metal trash bin and walk out of the house. No one tries to stop me. I walk, not trusting myself to drive with three glasses of wine and half a can of beer fueling the fire that’s lit itself in the itch of my chest.

Nineteen years.

I’m _pathetic_.

The thing about high school love is that it’s _high school love_. It doesn’t last, it never does, and after a year or two of moaning about how you’ll be single forever, you’re back on your feet.

College love is the first attempt at a serious relationship, and then there’s meeting people at work, bars, dinner parties… High school love is just a flicker of a candle in the night; tempting, but short-lived. There are bonfires out there, just waiting to be discovered with their warmth and power. But I must be some kind of sentimental moth, because I’ve been hovering around a dead flame for nineteen years, waiting for it to relight because I can’t see anything without it.

I know that Jean isn’t in my life anymore. There’s nothing for me to be unsure of, anymore. I’ve wasted so much time, numbly going along with the life plans my parents had laid out for me while my eighteen year old self stood in a dusty road in May with the sun just barely pushing at the dark violet night. It’s stupid and inaccurate to say that I feel stuck in that moment, because I don’t. There are days, sometimes weeks, where I go without thinking of him. I throw myself headlong into my work, into my gym routine, into making money and watching my savings grow as I look for houses in Canada because I want to _get away_.

But among those days, those weeks, I have flashes. I’ll drive past the high school on the way to the grocery store and remember Jean locking his keys in his car and I had to tow it behind my truck so his dad could grab a crowbar and open it up. I’ll stop at the single traffic light on Main and South and look over at the dingy Braus diner and remember smearing ice cream all over Jean’s face in retaliation for his hardcore games of footsie. I’ll be in the soup aisle and remember Jean whining at the grocery list his mother gave him with half a dozen cans of cream of mushroom soup, and I remember holding his hand in the aisles where we were left alone. I’ll just be sitting in my room and I remember leaving the window wide open, popping the screen out, waiting for Jean to crawl through on hot summer nights when he had too much of the hate in his own household.

I remember the call at four in the morning when everything ended.

I lose the momentum of my hurried walk somewhere between Here and There, and the town is so small that it’s impossible to get lost, but I just sulk back into the woods, sitting on a fallen trunk so I can still see the setting sun through the foliage. My arms wrap around my chest in a feeble attempt at comfort, and I feel something snag in my throat that I haven’t felt since those nights curled up under my sheets.

I cry.

I don’t know why. Maybe because the secret I thought I had successfully kept had been caught. Maybe because it had never been my secret in the first place. Eren knew, and who could tell if he hadn’t told everyone at the dinner party yet.

_“Gee, Eren, why did Marco leave?”_

_“Oh, he’s just a faggot. Didn't want him dirtying up the house.”_

I’m a thirty-seven year old man sobbing into my knees in the fucking woods on a Friday evening.

I don’t miss him. It’s past _missing him_ now. It’s anger, at myself for doing nothing, for being too slow, and at his parents for being the cause. It’s anger at this town, at feeling trapped, and I could scream if I wanted to. This town is a melting pot of religion and hate and closed minds and I’m _angry_ at it and I want to leave and find what happened to the boy with a blond mohawk and a smirk on his lips.

I still keep in contact with Hitch. We used to talk all the time, on a daily basis, up until she left for college and our hopes of Jean ever returning were beaten down. We send texts or emails during breaks in our busy lives, and she’ll occasionally ask me if I’ve found someone yet. I always say no, and her response is always “you’ll find someone eventually” as if it can be that easy.

After my tears harden into a hot anger in my chest at the world around me, I pull out my phone and scroll through my sparse contacts until I find Hitch’s cell. I send her a quick text, just a half-serious **‘do you know of any apartments for rent in chicago’** before I slip it back into my pocket as I stand.

I know, realistically, that I need to go get my car. My keys are still somewhere in that kitchen where I had removed them for digging into my thigh, and I’m halfway between my house and Eren’s, but the possibility of being caught returning fills me with a dread that I can’t shake.

I step out of the brush and onto the road and continue the walk home.

If my parents notice that I returned without a car and with dirt on my khakis, they say nothing, and allow me to sulk into my room under the guise of not feeling well.

My phone buzzes with a message that says **‘i was wondering when u would ask’** and I shove it under my pillow.

* * *

 

Returning for work on Monday is something I almost don’t do. I lay in bed, counting down the minutes and seconds that I’m wasting in my pajamas and cocooned in my cool sheets. I debate calling in sick and get so far as to grab my phone from where it’s been hiding since Friday, punching in the number for the office before I drop the phone on my face and hit the END button with my cheek.

I’m four minutes late, and my Buick is in the parking lot. Eren’s inside, chatting to Mikasa, who looks up as I walk in and ring the bell over the door.

“He’s alive!” Eren praises, throwing his arms up in the air in mock congratulations. Mikasa rolls her eyes and pushes off of the counter, already in her black pencil skirt and blazer for her shift at the bank. She tosses me my keys, and I hardly have the grace to catch them as they clatter against the floor. Eren laughs as I bend down to pick them up, mumbling a thanks.

“I’d like to know the whole story, but you’re making me late for work,” she sighs, shifting her purse on her shoulder. “See you.” She waves to them both and quickly brushes past me with an odd look before she leaves, the ringing of the cheap bells causing discomfort to curl in my gut.

I shove my keys in my pocket and look up to see Eren staring at me with a look that he’s never worn before when he’s not with a furry patient. It’s one of concern, and he’s hardly even blinking. I shift, uncomfortable, and make busy work of shoving my paper bag lunch into the mini fridge for safekeeping.

“Marco, we need to talk.”

I take a deep breath, my instincts telling me to run out and call in sick after all. But I turn to face him, leaning and half-sitting on the fridge. I can’t meet his eyes, so I stare at his feet, his white sneakers in harsh contrast to the deep purple smock he’s wearing today. I say nothing, something lodged in my throat and preventing me from doing so. Thankfully, Eren speaks first.

“You know I don’t really give a shit if you’re gay, right? I mean, I’m assuming the fiasco on Friday was a yes. I not a damn Bible-thumper, Marco, seriously. Shit, I mean, Historia’s bi and she's the priest's damn daughter. He has no idea.”

I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. All I can do is give a nod. I feel like I might pass out.

“So you are,” he softly accuses, but the blow lands light. “You don’t have to be so damn scared. You should have just told me.”

“Don’t say that,” I mutter, shoving my hands in my pockets. I don’t know what I’m saying, or why, but I am. “This town is… it’s _fucked up_. I can’t be out. You know what they did to Jean. For all I know, he’s dead.”

I have never considered that before.

It’s such a real possibility that it sobers me up immediately, and Eren notices. Hitch, his own sister, has heard nothing from Jean in nineteen years. I haven’t either. No one really has. For all we know, he only lasted two nights in that reform camp in Texas before he offed himself. It’s not something I like to think about.

“No one’s gonna do that to you,” Eren sighs, running a hand through his perpetually messy hair. “You’re almost forty. No one can send you away.”

“No, but I can be fired. I can be kicked out. I can be _killed_ , Eren.”

“No one’s gonna do that.”

I kick back against the fridge, my hands flying as I let the words that have been rotting in my shell of a body for far too long. “It happens every day, Eren! This whole town is brainwashed by Bibles and priests! Jean’s parents won’t even look at me—My own parents look like they’re scared of me! I hear them praying for me every damn night! They almost sent me off after Jean left! You don’t _get it!_ ”

He goes quiet. I feel like crying again.

The bell over the door rings as the first patient comes in—An elderly woman and an equally elderly dog. The woman’s crying. The dog needs to be put down. Eren guides them to the back room looking like he’s marching to the gallows, and I excuse my stinging eyes on the poor face of a three-legged black lab as it hobbles back for euthanasia.

Eren doesn’t bring up my sexuality again, and I’m thankful. He does mention that he _still_ has leftovers of the lasagna and he pushes some off onto me as a silent offering of an apology. The dead dog casts gloom on our Monday as Eren has a couple standard appointments. Connie comes in when Eren’s on another call to Shadis’ place to check on the new foal and Connie’s toting a small pet carrier that he puts on the counter.

“Please, Marco, I’m begging you. Take a damn puppy.”

I sigh, peering through the metal grate of the carrier. “I don’t have the room for a dog,” I lie easily, watching its wiggling butt as it tries to keep its eyes on Connie. It’s all yellow, but I notice one of the back paws has a sock of white on it.

Connie just pouts at me, and when the puppy turns around to see me with one ear stuck backwards and the other flopping against her head, my fate is sealed.

The death of the dog in the morning is replaced by Eren letting the little puppy out and feeding it puppy chow and a bowl of water as it runs around the already pet-proofed office. I tell Eren to keep it as an office dog. He agrees, and announces that Historia _loves_ dogs anyway.

The day ends on a stressful note as Marie (Eren said it fits her because she’s _elegant_ but she keeps chewing on the metal legs of the chairs in the waiting room) absolutely _refuses_ to get back into her carrier. We finally corner her in the bathroom and it takes both of us to pack her up and Eren goes home with her and to take her on a christening visit to the local PetCo (also known as the _only_ PetCo). I, on the other hand, get back in the truck I hadn’t driven since Friday and go to the grocery store because I had finished my very mature adult box of Lucky Charms this morning.

The world still feels like it’s at an awkward angle as I enter our generic grocery store and grab a small cart. I lean against it as I fight through the rush of after-work shoppers, cruising through the bakery with a salivating mouth (I grab _one_ box of blueberry muffins and tell myself that’s enough) before I meander to the produce, making healthy decisions to make up for the sugar-coated muffins that are easily the size of a small child’s head. I’ve got the cart full by the time I breeze through the deli and a few aisles, turning down the cereal aisle to see a couple debating between Apple Jacks or Fruit Loops. I feel a little less self-conscious when I notice that the woman is my age, and the back of the man’s head is

My cart slams into a standing display of Quaker oatmeal and the boxes tumble. The man turns around and I’m _frozen_ and I’m scared and I’m grabbing the handles of my cart and screeching it to a one-eighty and fleeing the aisle.

His amber eyes burn holes into my neck as I half-run towards checkout, telling myself I’ll just have a muffin for breakfast tomorrow.

It can’t be him.

I’m arguing with myself as I watch the bagger boy, a zit-covered high school freshman with a plastic smile, shoves my groceries away with little grace. The steady _beep_ of a swiped item is almost soothing, but I find myself looking around like a trapped animal.

It can’t be him because it’s been nineteen years and why would he _ever_ come back?

It can’t be him because he was with a _woman_ and his eyes were so much dimmer than the molten sun I had fallen in love with.

His hair had been in an undercut, shaved close except for a mop of blond that had been combed in a way that made him look too formal for the t-shirt and cargo shorts he had been wearing.

It can’t be him, because Jean was self-conscious of his legs.

When the clerk tells me my total I stammer when I tell her to put it on my credit and I fumble with the card when I swipe it. I grab my cart with brown bags of half the things I actually needed, walking briskly out of the automatic doors and making a beeline for my truck.

It can’t be him, because if it was, why did I run away?

I unload my groceries from the cart and into my truck before I just sit behind the wheel, unseeing through my bug-splattered windshield. I can feel my heart slamming, my breath catching in my chest, and I wonder if I’m going to vomit. I take a big breath and release it in a shaky exhale, and I tell myself that I don’t have time for a panic attack because I need to get the fresh pork chops I just bought into the freezer.

I roll down my windows, turn up the radio, and drive home. If my eyes keep checking the rear-view mirror or if I slow down in front of his house, no one sees me do it.

* * *

 

I make dinner for my parents to do something with my hands and I eat only a little bit and excuse myself because, mom, we put down a dog today. I close the door to my room and shuck my work clothes, putting on my pajama pants (I’ve graduated from TMNT to Batman now) and leave my shirt because I feel like my chest is going to explode. I sit on my bed and open the text thread with Hitch, re-reading the last message I got from her (yesterday morning, four o’clock. I almost vomit).

**Hitch Kirchstein [4:02]**  
**u know u always have a place here if u need to leave. i have a couch n ur practically my brother. srsly marco just say the word n ill fuckin pay for the plane ticket myself**

My hands are trembling too much to type out anything that autocorrect can identify, so I punch the call button and pray she isn’t busy with theatre life.

She answers on the second ring, confused. “Marco?”

“Have you heard anything about Jean?”

The question sends her reeling for a moment, and I don’t know if it’s because I blurted it out so quickly or because of the subject matter itself. “About five minutes ago, yeah. I was about to call you.”

I have to put my head between my knees and force the bile back down my throat. “Wh-what did you hear?”

“Marco, you sound really weird…”

“What did you hear?” I snap, my words coming out in gasps.

She pauses for a moment, as if she expects me to yell more, but continues. “I just got off the phone with mom. Jean came down to visit yesterday. I guess he’s leaving tomorrow morning. She wanted to rub it in that I haven’t visited lately.”

Jean’s in town. He’s been in town since yesterday, and I didn’t know until now. Had that really been him at the store? “Hitch… Does he have a girlfriend?”

She’s silent for a moment, struggling with the words. “Yeah. He’s engaged to a girl named Hannah.”

The world flips completely, and I’m freefalling into space.

“Okay” is the only thing I say, whispered like a prayer to the same god that took him away from me. “Thanks, Hitch,” comes out in a strangled gasp afterwards, and before she can reply, I hang up and drop the phone to my bed, head pinched between the cotton fabric on my knees.

I had thought of my reunion with Jean many times. Different scenarios, things I would say, how he would react. They ranged from something out of a Nicholas Sparks novel to bitter heartbreak, and it’s now that I have to pick which one fits this situation.

The best one was that, one night, Jean would climb through my first-story window and slide onto my twin mattress with me. We would kiss and catch up, yet it would be like no time had passed at all. We would be passionate and young again. He would take me away to his own lavish home and we would spend days in his California King bed, touching and fucking in Egyptian cotton, far away from the harshness of our lives. That is the same daydream that we would get married in, that we would adopt children and raise them with the love and care our parents never gave to us. That’s the happy ending. We grow old and gray together, surrounded by a family we had made ourselves.

The worst one, of course, is now the one I find myself faced with. A world in which Jean has been tortured and beaten to be straight. A world where he forgets about me, forgets about what we had. He’s married, with kids that have his golden eyes and mischievous smirk, and his wife is as gorgeous as they come with gorgeous ginger hair and freckles worthy of Weasly status. They love each other very much, holding hands and kissing freely in the places we once had to hide. I’m nothing but a forgotten ghost of his past, the reason for all of his pain and agony. He comes home to introduce his pregnant wife to his parents and leaves without a word to me.

He’s leaving tomorrow morning. I have to do _something_.

I sigh and lay back in bed, staring at the ceiling and playing reruns that are twenty years old on the back of my eyelids. Back when things weren’t necessarily easy, but back when I could breathe without feeling stones rattle in my lungs.

* * *

 

I wake up to my ceiling fan spinning and the light still beating down at me. The lime green numbers on my digital clock are telling me that it’s just gone two in the morning, and my Batman bottoms are awkwardly wrinkled and bunched around my legs. My shirt is also hitched up, the sheets a mess beneath me, and all of it is a testament to the horrible sleep I had been getting. I sit up slowly, coming my fingers through bed-mussed hair and trying to figure out why, exactly, I woke up. My first suspect is the light, the fact that my clothes are very uncomfortable, or maybe the fact that my phone is ringing.

I frown at the muffled ring, just the standard Samsung music clip. I dig it out from under my pillow, my frown deepening at the unfamiliar number. It’s an unfamiliar area code, even, and my gut is telling me that it’s just a solicitor, but I find my finger sliding across the glass to answer anyway.

“H’lo?” I slur, my voice cracking slightly with sleep. I still have a hand tangling in my hair, feeling the greasiness and making a vow to take a shower as soon as I hang up with the inevitable telemarketer.

“Is this Marco?”

(Of course, what kind of telemarketer calls at two in the morning?)

The voice sounds rough, though there’s a velveteen comfort in it. He sounds like he might be a radio announcer, maybe a singer, maybe just a telemarketer too tired to put on the peppy tone of voice he’s supposed to. There’s a beat where I don’t even say anything, but he speaks again, repeating my name with hesitant caution.

“Marco?”

“Yeah,” I croak, my throat dry as I tug at my hair, trying to blink out of my accidental moment of sleep. “This is Marco.”

There’s a pause, and I wonder if this man has the wrong number. Then again, if it were the wrong number, how would he know my name?

I catch a hitch of breath buzzing through the line before the voice softens. “Can you come outside, please?”

“What?” I mutter, tugging at my hair again before my hand drops to the bed, serving as support as I turn to look out the window, though I can’t see much beyond the cast of my bedroom light across the darkness of my front yard.  Living on the outskirts of town like this, there aren’t any streetlights to aid me.

“Can you please come outside?”

I see a flash of movement, a glow of light. A car that was parked on the other side of the street lights up as the door is opened, but the man is too far away for me to see properly. The dull thud of the door closing echoes through the silence of my room, and I scoot closer towards the window.

There’s a baseball bat in my closet that I can grab if this is a home invasion.

“Who’s this?” I grit out, trying to edge across the window and to my closet without being spotted. I can see the man’s silhouette crossing the street, the light from my room catching on dark tennis shoes before I duck under the sill of my window and crawl to the closet, still holding my phone to my ear.

“It’s… It’s me.”

“Thanks for the answer,” I bite back sarcastically, a bit hostile as I finally wiggle over to my closet, pulling the door open and standing behind it, pushing aside a small mountain of dirty laundry to grab my aluminum bat, holding my breath for an answer.

I can swear I hear him choke back a sob.

“It’s me, Marco. It’s Jean.”

The bat slips out of my fingers as I clutch my phone closer to my face, smashing the speaker to my ear. My breath catches around the constant tumble of rocks in my lungs and I can’t _breathe_ and I hear his broken voice come across again.

It’s deeper than it used to be, but the smooth tones underlying the rough exterior send a shooting pain through me that roots me to the spot.

“Marco, baby, it’s me… I know you’re probably pissed—Shit, maybe you forgot me. You probably never want to see me again, but please don’t hang up. Please, just come outside. I want… I want to hold you. At least once. I know it was you at the store… Why did you run away? If you don’t wanna see me, th-that’s fine. I just… I need closure, Marco. Please.”

He sounds like he’s about to cry. Or maybe he already is.

I feel like I can’t speak. The rocks have moved, forming a dam in my throat. My breaths are coming short with panic, my voice trapped behind a small choke of vocal chords that sort of sound like Jean’s name.

I move instead, not knowing if Jean would just hang up and leave or not. He starts to ramble, the words tumbling out in a mess, as I turn back to the window. I see him there, the light of my room yellowing his silhouette to form a blob of a man. He’s wearing jeans and a flannel, but when he paces and hugs himself, I see a flash of the same shirt he had worn at the store.

I press the red END button on my phone while he's still talking and toss it to my bed. Jean’s reaction to the dead call is almost instant. He pulls his phone down to look at the screen, and I notice his free hand rubbing roughly at his face as his body trembles. He’s crying, I can tell, and he looks at the window after a long moment spent trying to pull himself together. The light glints off of the impressive tear tracks on his cheeks, and I waste minimal time in cranking open my window and popping the screen out.

I say nothing, he says nothing, yet the way I step back and aside is a silent invitation. He blinks, his face marred in sadness before the ghost of a smile attempts to cross his lips. He shoves his phone in the back pocket of his jeans and almost jogs to the window, as if he’s scared I’ll slam it shut. I move back to give him room as he awkwardly climbs through—His adult body is apparently less flexible than his wiry teenage years, and I almost feel like laughing as he nearly face-plants just trying to get his legs in.

He straightens and rights himself, and I watch his golden sunset eyes flit around the familiar setup of my room. I think the only difference is that my tiny twin-sized mattress is shoved towards the middle of my room now, not smashed against the wall. Well, that and my Garfield clock has met its demise years ago.

All I notice, in those small moments where he spends his life as eighteen, that his eyes no longer resemble the fires of the sun in twilight. They are darker, more tame. The gold has sunken to amber, the vibrant flecks of sunshine diffusing to darkened clouds. He’s older, I know, but his eyes are hiding ghosts and secrets unlike they ever had.

He is a stranger to me.

He takes a slow, rattling breath as his eyes settle on me, his fists clenching and unclenching at his hips in a very old fidget. His hands are as large as they used to be, but he’s grown into them now. His shoulders are broad beneath his red flannel, his neck strong and his chin sharp and long. I notice a ghost of dark stubble along his jaw, the same color as his undercut, the blond highlights in a state of distress as if he’s been running his hands through it for hours. There are bags under his empty eyes, reddened by tears, and I find myself tracing the subtle bow of his lips. He looks like a man that’s walked a million miles in a single day. He looks tired, lost, _empty_. The smell of too much body spray is replaced by the subtle scent of pine, and his stance is no longer slouched and relaxed, but stiff with a spine that refuses to relax. Almost as if he’s a military man standing at attention. This is Jean, just as he told me.

But I do not know who this man is.

“Marco,” falls from his lips in a whisper that sounds like a plea, and I notice the twitch in his fingers as he takes a tentative step forward. “Marco, say something…”

I had practiced so many times of what I would say. I cried at myself in the mirror, I yelled in the shower, I gave soft words of forgiveness and comfort to my bedroom ceiling. I had imagined how I would feel when I saw him again, the expression he might wear, the way he would feel as I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him with lips that had been saved for worship in the dark. I imagined that I would direct my anger at him and scare him off. I would get revenge for the years I spent left alone and quiet, wondering if my high school lover was even _alive_.

Now, I find my tongue empty.

“Marco,” he chokes, stepping closer. He’s just out of arm’s reach. “I’m so, so fucking sorry, baby. I know it wasn’t fair of me, but I couldn’t—Babe, I’ve been _hiding_ for so long. I didn’t want to put you in danger, please, you have to understand. I finally got the chance to come back here, to find you, and _god_ , I missed you. I just… I wanna talk, Marco. I don’t have long, but _please_.”

“Then start talking.”

My voice is detached. Cold.

Jean’s eyes widen, and I swear I see a reflection of the sun within him. A solar flare, licking outwards, trying to reach something so teasingly close. He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing violently, before he steps back and sits on the edge of my bed. I can see the silent invitation for me to join him, but a stiff shake of my head answers it for him. His elbows rest on his knees, hands rubbing over his face before his fingers tangle together and drop. His head is bowed as if he’s a man mid-prayer, and there’s something within me that wants to surge forward and hold him. But the floor seems to have claimed me now, and I cannot move at all.

All I can remember is the boy with his face pressed against the glass as his father drove him away.

“That camp… _fuck_ , Marco. There were sirens every night… People committing suicide. I almost did it too, I swear to god, but you…” He chokes, fresh tears running down his face as he attempts to talk through it. “I just thought of you. I was there for six fuckin’ years, Marco. _Six years._ After that, they sent me to a church… I was a goddamn success story. I’ve been preaching in churches to these poor kids that just wanna be loved, and I can’t… I can’t do it anymore. I can’t pretend anymore. This town is a black hole, Marco. It sucked me in and spat me out somewhere even worse. I don’t wanna waste time with the details, okay, but just…” He takes a deep breath, raising his tear-swollen eyes to catch mine. I don’t look away.

“Come with me.”

“It’s been nineteen years,” I finally speak, my voice cracking. I hadn’t noticed that my own eyes were full of water. “It’s been nineteen years, and we’ve grown up. You… You’re _engaged_ , Jean.”

His eyes grow wide, and he opens his mouth to speak, but I talk over him.

“I can get out of this town on my own, Jean. I _will_ get out of this town.”

His voice is so quiet that I almost miss his words. “You’ve been saying that since we were kids…”

I swallow and shake my head, leaning against the sill open window. “I’m not going with you, Jean. You’ve found someone else.”

He chokes on another sob and rakes his hands through his mess of hair. It almost sounds like a laugh. “Fuck, Marco… No, I didn’t. That’s just somethin’ I told mom—“

“There was a woman with you—“

“Hannah, yeah. She’s… a good friend. She’s backing me up with this whole thing.” He stands, rubbing his palms on his knees as he crosses back over to me. I try not to shy away. “I came here to get you. If you want. I have a house up in Indiana now. I just bought it last week. I… If you want, there’s two bedrooms. If you’ll have me.”

I’m silent. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to _believe_.

He takes another step forward, and I don’t pull away when his knuckles brush my arm in a soothing gesture. “Marco, baby… I still love you. Please. I love you. I never stopped… Every damn night, every day… I’ve been lying just so I could get through and get by well enough so I could come back for you. You gotta believe me, love…”

“You never called.”

He flinches at the accusation, his eyes flitting down as his hand drops. “I-I know… I didn’t… I was scared that your parents would find out or the clergy would figure me out… But I’m here now, baby. Please, come back with me.”

Before I could speak, he moves closer, his hand raising to cup my cheek. His eyes, so dark, so strange, close gently as I feel his lips press against mine.

I’m eighteen again, crying into a pillow with one of Jean Kirchstein’s shirts on it because I miss him.

I want to push him away. I want to crawl back into bed and scream and cry about things that once were and never would be. But instead of shoving him back, my hands fist in the loose material of his flannel and pull him closer. My eyes close, I feel him gasp against me, and his large hands are cradling my jaw as his lips open against mine and we _melt_.

I know who this man is.

I love him.

And that scares me.

It scares me because I have spent so many years clinging to _should have_ , _could have, would have_. I had spent so many nights staring at my ceiling, staring at my phone, staring at the driveway of a boy I loved. It was just high school love, I had told myself, and I would get over it. We were kids. Kids didn’t fall in _love_.

I feel him gasp a sob against my lips and I taste salt, but I know it’s not all of his tears that are tainting it. My eyes are screwed shut with damp eyelashes, and my hands are relaxed to run my palms down his chest.

I feel him flinch when I reach his stomach, and I stop.

His hands remain on my jaw as our eyes open to see each other, and his thumbs swipe away at my tears. He looks like he’s going to sob even more, his fingers trembling where they hold my skin. “Marco, love… Come with me. Please. I just… I need an answer.”

As a fully grown adult, I know that this is bad. I need to tell him to leave, to never come back. I need to cradle my broken heart and get to work on stitching it up with threads woven of closure and answers. I need to be an _adult_ and move out of this house and move to a new town and get a roommate off Craig’s List and fall in love with some girl in one of my career choices and I need to be an _adult_. I can’t entertain ideas of a childhood dream where I married Jean Kirchstein and everything would be okay someday.

I wonder if this is my Someday.

I nod.

He chokes out another sob before he’s kissing me again, and I’m pawing at his sides and his chest and his arms and _anything_ I can reach, wanting him closer. It feels like some kind of livid dream, my eyes sticking shut on tears as he whispers apologies and love between our lips and creates new promises about us. I just cry into him, and I eventually regain myself enough to mumble something about his supposed fiancée against his jaw.

He laughs, wrapping his arms tight around my waist, afraid to let me go. But that’s okay, because I’ve got my fingers hooked in the belt loops of his jeans. “Baby, I’m not engaged. Hannah’s a friend, I told you. She knows everything—Shit, she’s waiting in the car right now for me to run out there with you and a suitcase.”

This can’t be real. This kind of thing only happens in Nicholas Sparks books. I can’t just blindly go with my high school lover without saying goodbye to my parents, without calling my current employer to tell them I’m leaving, without even sending a text to Hitch—

But here I am, shoving all my worldly possessions in an off-brand Fossil suitcase until it barely zips. Even then, Jean digs out my backpack from the bottom of my closet to shove more things into. I don’t even bother with toiletries as Jean says we can just buy more on the drive back.

 _We_.

I’m still crying with joy as Jean awkwardly climbs out of my window and I hand him my luggage. He practically _runs_ to the car, and the engine revs as I notice the woman from the store in the driver’s seat, rolling down the window and letting out a whoop of excitement.

I pull on a pair of socks and slip on my tennis shoes (the heels crumble, but it's good enough for me) and I shove my pillow from my cold twin sized mattress under my arm before I crawl out of my window with even less grace than Jean. I replace the screen awkwardly and leave the pane wide open, taking a long look at my room through the metal screen before I turn and run after the boy that’s become a man without me.

I don’t regret it as the town fades into the dark behind me and Hannah takes the wheel, Jean and I sitting in the back to hold each other as we cry and whisper tender words of forgiveness, apologies, and love between broken sobs.

I'm eighteen again, and everything is  _okay_.


	2. Queen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> long time no see, folks.
> 
> inspiring song for this chapter is [here](https://www.youtube.com/v/-2U0Ivkn2Ds?autoplay=1).

I am in love with the idea of love.

I am in love with an eighteen year old boy that is scared of his own shadow, that was an actual  _ mathlete _ , that was on the honor roll, that was going to apply for ivy league schools to become a mathematician or a physicist. I am in love with a boy that needs my help to shave the back of his head to make room for a mohawk, that needed me to pull on latex gloves and work putrid bleach into his hair while he sat near an open window to mask the smell from his parents. I am in love with a fourteen year old boy that  _ beamed  _ when he bought a skateboard, but pouted through tears of pain when he wiped out in a gravel pit while I plastered TMNT band-aids on the wounds that would need six stitches. 

I was not in love when I groggily climbed out of the backseat of a Ford Fusion at eleven in the morning after a nonstop drive and followed Jean Kirchstein into his small apartment.

I had been too high on relief, on excitement, to think clearly back in my room at the early hours of a dark almost-morning. I had made an immature decision, choosing to run after nineteen years of pain instead of remaining stagnant with my aging parents and nine to five adult responsibility at a vet's office.

I should not have come, but when Jean looks over his shoulder to give me a sleepy smile when he opens the door, I smile back.

The apartment doesn't have much. It’s sparsely furnished (no TV even) with an open floor plan that drifts to a bathroom and two bedrooms.

One bedroom is cluttered from life, clothes on the floor, the double bed unmade, and a rubbish bin beside the frameless double mattress full of chip bags and tissues.

The other bedroom is pristinely bare, save for an awkwardly neat futon and a floor lamp.

"You can sleep wherever you want... I can skip work tomor- er, today, to stay here. Show you around."

He sounds so tired that it makes something inside of me ache. He’s tired from more than the drive, from switching off with Hannah when she wanted a quick nap. His shoulders are limp, body only being held up by a softened spine. He isn't even looking at me, placing my bags down beside the deflated, salvaged couch that is his living room. He stretches, cracks his back, and heads for his bedroom.

He pauses there, and looks over his shoulder at me.

"I'm really glad you came, Marco… Feel free to grab the futon, or sleep out here… Wherever you wanna crash."

There are shadows under his dull eyes, and I know they aren't just from exhaustion.

I force an awkward smile to my lips as he goes into his room and simply flops on the bed, only kicking his shoes off as an afterthought. He is completely still in the morning light that filters through a dusty window, and I wonder if he's already asleep.

I choose to relax on the futon, under the stiff, unused white sheets.

I do not sleep.

I lay and I stare at the ceiling that looks pink in the filter of thin red curtains and I count my mistakes in the cracks that stand out like purple scars against the plaster.

I must doze at some point between pink and purple, because I wake up to my silenced phone beeping with low battery.

I can also hear the horrid sounds of a dying coffee machine and smell the roast of hazelnut. My stomach growls and my throat creaks for liquid.

But I cannot find it within myself to get up.

Instead, I roll over, grabbing my dying phone and closing the notification that it does, in fact, only have three percent of its battery left.

Though, the notification fades only to reveal a flashing  **11 MISSED CALLS 4 VOICEMAILS 19 TEXT MESSAGES.**

I turn my phone off and resume my stare at the ceiling.

I hear Jean speaking. I eavesdrop.

“Yeah, he’s here… I know, I didn’t think he would either. I got a lot to make up for, Hitch… I know, I know.” He sighs, a heavy, exhausted thing, and I hear the creak of springs on his bed as he sits. “I can try. I know I put him through a lot of shit… I still love him. Really, Hitch. I  _ do _ .”

I close my eyes and listen to the muted cars on the street below, not wanting to hear the rest of this conversation.

The sound of a squeaking floorboard is my only warning before Jean gently nudges the door open, a steaming mug in each hand. I think I’ve dozed off again, but does it really matter? I don’t feel rested. I feel as if I haven’t slept in nineteen years.

"Are you up? It's almost six."

I make a vague noise in response as I sit up, but my face must show my inner turmoil because Jean recoils slightly.

"I, uh... I made coffee... If you want some. I know you used to drink it, so..."

"Thanks," I mutter, sliding off of the futon with a sore back to meet him halfway as he offers me the coffee.

I take a small sip, and try not to flinch at the perfect amount of cream and sugar he had mixed it with. The same I used to drink on Monday mornings when school was too tough to get to. I drink my coffee with less sugar now, but I don’t tell him that. Instead, my fingers tighten, and I cling to the shred of the past in hopes that I can find that youthful love in myself to give to him.

"We can just hang out, of you want," he says awkwardly, both hands clasped tight around his mug. "Catch up, and all that… It’s already, like, three in the afternoon..."

I just give a nod and follow him out to the living area.

We sit on the deflated couch, with an entire cushion of space between us that could easily fit another person. I fold my legs under myself as I wade through the fog in my mind, and Jean fidgets, knee bouncing, as he starts to talk.

"I know I... I know I should have come sooner. Or called you, but... I was being monitored around the clock. I didn't even have a phone until just recently... I was homeless for a long time too. Then I was given a room in a parish..." The shame in those words carries a heavy weight, and I stare into the warped reflection of myself in my coffee because I don't want to see the look on his face.

"It took a really long time for me to get money together... I still don't have a car, but I have a space I can be myself in. The only job I have is at the church and a part-time shift at a grocery store, and... I don't make much money there. I can barely meet the bills. I'm looking for another job. I really am, but..."

But he had spent nineteen years clinging to the past. He had only thought of me, and that had ruined him. If he had thought of himself, maybe he would have gotten a better job. He could move on. He could have gone to college and met someone else that he loved.

I think I've moved on.

I'm not sure that I love him anymore. I’m not sure I can love the almost-forty man sitting next to me with a stiff stubble of a beard and lines around his eyes from shutting them too tight around tears that make him look so  _ old _ .

I keep those thoughts to myself.

"You... You were the only one I even liked in that town, Marco. Even the people here, I can't... I can't connect with them. Hannah, she's okay, but we don't... talk much. This whole thing was her idea because I kept talking about you... She was the only one that listened. I've only ever wanted to be with you, Marco, but I know... I know that it might not be mutual."

"It isn't," is what I mutter into my coffee. Part of me hopes that he doesn’t hear. 

He does.

He startles, but I don't look at him. I can feel the way he moves the old, junky couch when he flinches, the stillness as his leg stops.

"But... you came all the way here with me."

I can feel my eyes prickling as the rockslide resumes in my lungs. It’s hard to breathe through the dust of stone. "I... I don't know anymore. It’s been a really long time."

He makes a small, broken noise in his throat. "Y-yeah, I guess... You're right. I mean, you're even starting to go gray." He forces a laugh, but it’s a pitiful, saddening sound.

"It's from stress." It comes out in a whisper. I don’t look up at him.

I'm comparing a match to a bonfire. My stress had been strictly related to college and work and family and a bible-beaten town.

I cannot fathom the pain and stress that Jean has endured.

He laughs, and it's even more forced than the last one. "Why do you think I dye my hair?"

My chest aches.

He sighs softly, wiggling his toes against the faux hardwood flooring. "But, uh... What have you been up to?"

I shrug, rubbing my thumbs against the warmth of my mug. "I... went to college. Got a degree in accounting."

He chokes on his coffee for a moment, and then he laughs, and it's a real laugh, and I can finally look up to see him smirking at me.

"That definitely explains the gray hair. You're awful at math, salt-n-pepper."

I can't help but smile at the nickname, even though it picks at an insecurity, because he's laughing and it’s the same awkward, high, obnoxious laugh from nineteen years ago.

"Yeah... My parents pushed me into it. I work at the little vet clinic, but... I guess I don't now." No job, no car, nothing. I didn't think any of this through, and I'll be kicking myself later. Or even sooner.

"You've stayed in that house this whole time...?"

I nod, looking back down at my mug and distracting myself with a sip of rapid cooling, too-sugary coffee as Jean makes a small sound of sympathy.

"It wasn't bad," I defend, more in reflex than on truth. "I made a couple friends..." If Eren counted. If Eren's sister counted. If the old lady at the deli that always knew how thin I liked my black forest ham counted. "I had a job and a roof over my head..." And now? Now what do I have? A nineteen year old lost love and a couple bags.

He makes another little noise before he sips tenderly at his own coffee, eyes unfocused as he stares at his bare feet. Neither one of us speak, and I set my empty mug on the floor when I finish. He makes a soft comment about how he's planning to buy furniture soon and that everything he has was given to him by the church. He talks to fill the silence. He talks to keep the cushion of a  _ canyon _ between us from growing larger.

"At least they're good for something," he comments bitterly.

I only nod.

There’s a tension in the air between us that I cannot identify or even cut through, and Jean must feel it too, because he stands. He gathers my empty mug alongside his as he crosses to the open kitchen, placing them in the sink.

“I, uh… don’t have too much for food. I have some pasta, though.”

“That’s fine,” I murmur, straightening my legs out to stretch them before they can cramp up. “I’m not a picky eater.”

He scoffs, grabbing a pot from a near-empty cupboard. “Yeah, and I’m a fucking millionare.”

It’s like it’s only been a few days since I’ve seen him. He remembers  _ everything _ . I decide not to correct him that I really have expanded my palate and adulthood had numbed a majority of my tastebuds. That I don’t spend five minutes making sure none of my foods  _ touch _ .

The tension dissipates as Jean works around the small kitchen and I retrieve my phone, plugging it into the charger against the wall that (luckily) is a perfect fit for it. I have half a mind to just remove the battery and chuck the thing, but I can’t just  _ leave _ and never give an explanation.

I know all too well what  _ that  _ feels like.

“Hey, uh… about your job.”

I look up from my perch on the couch, where I had been staring at my phone as if I could make it charge slower. The longer it took, the more time I had to gather my thoughts. “Yeah?”

He settles the lid on the pot of boiling water before he turns to me, a can of off-brand Prego in his hand. “I got a part-time deal at the grocery store around here… I can see if I can get you in as full-time. I mean, you have a degree and all, so…”

He wants to get me a job. To let me have money, something to do with my time. He doesn’t want me to feel useless, because he remembers how much I hated doing  _ nothing _ .

He wants to make this a permanent arrangement.

I cannot look him in the eyes.

“Y-yeah, that… Sure, I mean. It’ll work.”

I’ve missed an entire day of work with no explanation. Eren had to go through an entire day of work without me handling the computer and the schedule and the billing. The guilt is heavy in my chest, and I feel like I might be suffocating under a rockslide that is no longer a tumble but a  _ roar _ .

I look up to see Jean looking so unsure, his smile faltering, and he turns back to the kitchen to busy himself with fiddling with the burners or checking the water.

We exist in an awkward place. Jean still believes we’re teenagers high on love, whereas I’m confronting the truth that we are adults that have had nineteen years to drift away and give up on each other. He has held onto hope for nineteen years that I would still love him, and I have given up hope that I would even  _ see _ him again.

We are strangers, meeting for the first time.

“I thought you might have died,” I confess at some point, and I flinch as Jean drops the lid from the boiling water onto his faux granite counter with a sharp clatter.

But I keep going, knowing that if I can get my anxiety out into the open air, it might go away. But I can’t look at him, instead choosing to stare at my black-screened phone as the little red charging light blurs through my sight.

I think I’m crying.

“How was I supposed to  _ not _ move on, Jean? I thought you were dead, or you forgot about me. I… I couldn’t keep lingering on you. I had to move on, or else… Or else you could have destroyed me. I kept waiting, and I never grew up. I still live with my parents, Jean. I don’t have anything to show for myself… I had to move on, or else I wouldn’t be able to function at all.”

Hasn’t he learned that? That dwelling on the past only strains the future? We’re thirty-seven and hung up on the love of teenagers.

“I… I came because… I dunno. Second chances, I guess, but… We’re not the same kids we used to be. We’ve grown up, grown apart… There’s no way this can work.”

Jean says nothing for a moment, dumping noodles into the boiling water. He pokes at the pot with a ladle for a while, and I fist my hands into the fabric of my pajama pants and screw my eyes shut against the tears leaking free. I can  _ hear _ the way I’ve broken his heart, and it hurts me deeply. To think I had lead him on, that nineteen years had meant nothing to me, only for me to deny him…

It’s unfair to him that I’m selfish and day-dreaming.

When I hear him speak next, he’s much closer.

“We just have to try.”

I open my eyes to see him standing before me, bare feet on the floor. I look up at him, see the sad, desperate look in his darkened eyes. He’s clinging to that damn can of spaghetti sauce as if it’s going to save his life. As if it can save  _ us _ . But we’re going to need more than generic Prego.

“We… have a lot of catching up to do, I know. But I never got over you, Marco. I never moved on. I know it’s unhealthy, but… I still love you.”

I want to tell him to shut up. To stop saying that. To stop making me feel how guilty those words make me suffer. I don’t love him-- I look at him and see a stranger with an eighteen year old buried underneath bruises, wrinkles, and dull eyes.

I’m not in love with him anymore, but with what we  _ used _ to have.

He fidgets with the jar awkwardly, holding it out for me. “S-sorry, but… can you open this?”

“Oh, uh… yeah.”

I open the jar with the aid of my shirt and pretend that Jean wasn’t staring at the brief show of my skin.

The next two days are… odd.

It takes me a full forty-eight hours just to get my sleeping schedule back on track, and I spend most of the time Jean spends at work curled up on the couch, staring at my phone. I leave it plugged in and shut off, just because I don’t know how to face what’s waiting for me. 

I understand that saying nothing, leaving overnight, is doing to everyone what Jean did to me, and yet I can’t face that confrontation just yet. I know the longer I wait, the worse it’s going to get, but I find myself nauseated as my mind replays scenarios of how badly returning phone calls could go.

I’m basically an unmoving  _ blob _ that exists in states of anxiety and guilt and  _ fear _ .

Though, when Jean isn’t at work or scrambling to gather food stamps to stock the cupboards, we talk.

We talk about the past nineteen years and how it’s changed us. 

I tell him about my depression, my anxiety, and what happened at Historia Jeager’s lasagna party. I tell him how I’m more in love with the  _ idea _ of love, and he understands by telling me that he was just too scared to move on. He was scared to forget me, to fall out of love. He was scared to accept the fact that he was very,  _ very _ alone.

He shows me sketches on napkins, receipts, shreds of religious conversion propaganda that depict me, and the various ways he imagines I would have aged. He shows me scars on the insides of his wrists from when he tried to slice himself open with plastic knives in Texas, and I show him the way my nails are chewed to the quick and my hair has grayed.

We compare demons, and somewhere in the span of the first two days of treading water, Jean pulls an unopened bottle of cheap whiskey from his cupboard. I’m sitting on the couch with his laptop, looking for job offerings and pretending that I don’t see my powered down phone just  _ begging _ for me to pay attention and mend my burned bridges.

“Got it from dad’s stash,” he supplies smugly, flopping onto the couch beside me. I notice that he has no glasses, and I arch a brow at him.

He shrugs, pulling the cork out with his teeth when he can’t manage with his hands. “It’s not like we’re gonna drink the whole damn bottle if we don’t have glasses, Marco. I don’t think either of us are much for whiskey.”

Three hours of talking about  _ fuck _ knows what and we’ve gotten it down to half the bottle, passing it back and forth. To be honest, all I remember is Jean turning to me after my throat stops burning and my lips stop puckering from my latest sip to speak to me.

“I really  _ do _ love you, Marco.”

And then, simply put, he kisses me.

I notice almost immediately that he’s lost the clumsy shyness of adolescence in exchange for the bold  _ bravery _ that comes with adulthood and alcohol. There is a bit of sloppiness, though it’s on both our behalves and the fault of the whiskey I had apparently put down on the floor sometime between Jean suckling on my bottom lip and me crawling into his lap.

And somewhere between me gasping his name against his lips and his hands sliding up my thighs, I gave up on love and instead found a home within  _ lust _ .

Jean whispers sweet confessions of love to me, but I close my eyes and pretend we’re seventeen and careless. I let my hands sweep along his body, to feel how he’s grown from gangly to slim, to feel patches of hair where there had previously been one or two pubescent strands. His hands are doing the same to me, and yet I do not shy away, but  _ arch _ into the touch, feeling it ignite across my skin like sparklers leaving trails in slow-shutter stills…

And somewhere between the images of summers cut too-short and winters spent holding hands under blankets, we’re naked and I’m between his knees as the whiskey tips and pools against the floor.

“Marco, I love you so  _ much _ …”

He’s hard, so much different from seventeen and shy, and his hands, large and calloused, weave into my hair to pull me closer. I have never done oral, never had any experience beyond porn in my room with the volume muted, but perhaps the drink and the way Jean  _ keens _ for me is enough to get my courage to press my lips to him.

He doesn’t taste good. Not in a single definition of that word does he taste  _ good _ . It’s salty and dry and  _ big _ , but he moans and begs me to keep going, and so I do. I accept that taste and the odd way it mixes with the spice of whiskey, holding his hips down when he jerks them up and threatens to choke me. And he’s  _ moaning _ above me and  _ whimpering _ my name and I figure I must be doing something right because I can taste the sour saltiness of precum and his thighs are shaking. He’s praising my name to any god that will listen, his fingers tight and  _ painful _ in my hair as his hips fight against my hold to no avail, because this Jean is still  _ weak _ .

“M-Marco, babe, I’m gonna  _ cum _ \--”

I’ve seen enough porn to know that swallowing usually ends in  _ choking _ , so I immediately take my mouth off and replace it with my hand, pumping him  _ hard _ and  _ fast _ until he reaches an octave I didn’t know possible and cums on my hand and his own stomach.

I am not hard.

As Jean gasps for air and comes back to himself, I stand and wash my hands in the bathroom. I rinse my mouth with the unopened mouthwash in the back of his cupboard and change into another pair of clothes. I put on my shoes and grab my phone, walking out when Jean finally comes around enough to hoarsely ask where I’m going.

I don’t know this city well enough to know exactly where I’m going, but I stop at the first park bench I see to sit and turn on my neglected phone.

**19 MISSED CALLS 6 VOICEMAILS 37 TEXT MESSAGES**

More than before.

I go through the texts first, finding annoyed ones from Eren about me missing work before they turned  _ scared _ , threatening to file a police report on a missing persons case… There are even a few texts from Mikasa, telling me to get back with Eren before he gets the FBI involved, and one at four in the morning to be safe. No texts from my parents, though that’s who all the calls and voicemail messages are from.

I delete them without listening.

I send a text to Eren.

**Sorry. Things came up. Don’t call the cops. I’m alive. Long story.**

Almost immediately, I get one back.

**wht the fuck????**

I sigh, running a hand over my face and scowling at the scent that’s clung to my fingers. It makes me nauseous, and the sex-reeked digits tremble as I try to text. It takes me several tries just to spell correctly.

**Jean came back.**

It’s much longer for this reply. I send a text to Hitch while I wait, announcing that I’m in Chicago with her brother, who isn’t actually engaged. Eren replies first.

**dont you fucking say youre with him**

I chew my cheek. Hitch sends me an emoticon. A winking smile. I reply to Eren.

**Then I won’t say it. Sorry to make you worry. Tell my parents I’m okay.**

The reply is almost immediate.

**dude they have the cops involved r u srs??? im not telling them shit this is all ur mess marco**

I turn off my phone.

“Marco!”

I look up to see Jean half- _ running _ to me, out of breath as he stops with a hand on the bench. He’s in his pajamas, what he had been wearing  _ before _ , and his eyes are wide and the color of old whiskey that only leads to bad decisions.

“Marco,  _ Jesus _ , what was that for? You scared me!”

I cannot look at him, and I redirect my line of sight to the ground. There are cigarette butts in the cracks of the sidewalk, and a piece of gum holding the imprint of someone’s shoe. It’s dirty, and it makes me feel  _ disgusting _ .

Jean hesitates, it’s clear, before a waving hand interrupts my study of a smashed McChicken wrapper that’s stuck in the storm drain. “...Come on. Tell me what’s up, Marco…”

How can I tell him when I don’t know myself? I don’t know why I ran away from him. I don’t know why it wasn’t even  _ arousing _ . I don’t know why I let it happen, only to flee afterwards. I could blame the whiskey, but I know that I can’t blame it for everything. I’m still  _ drunk _ , feeling myself swaying on the bench as my hands shake something  _ fierce _ from where they grip my powered down phone. I wonder, if I were sober, would I have even ran away from that?

Don’t get me wrong, it was nice to kiss him. It was nice to be  _ close _ to someone.

But I need to remind myself that the Jean of Today is a stranger compared to the Jean of Seventeen.

And so, that’s how I say it.

“I don’t love you anymore, Jean.”

I don’t look up to see the way it shatters him. I can see it well enough in the way his fingers curl in submission, fisting loosely at his sides with defeat. His shoes scuff at the ground, knocking at discarded cigarettes, and when he speaks, his voice sounds so  _ fragile _ .

“I’m sorry, Marco. I didn’t… want to make you feel like you had to do that. We never have to do it again, if you don’t want to. I doubt it… felt very good to you… I’m sorry.”

I shake my head, beginning a staring contest with that discarded McChicken wrapper, yellow and soggy.

“That’s not the problem.”

I hear him inhale sharply. I know him well enough to tell that he’s on the verge of tears. Yet… he’s still a stranger to me. I don’t know if Today Jean still cries as easily as Seventeen Jean.

“Then what’s the problem, Marco? Tell me. I know my apartment’s shit, and I can’t cook, and I only have a minimum wage job, and--”

“I just don’t love you anymore.”

I look up to see Jean Kirchstein, now a thirty-six year old man,  _ crying _ .

Granted, it’s the quiet kind, where your lip just trembles to keep you silent and tears roll down your cheeks and drip from your chin to pool against your shirt collar. It’s the ugly kind, with a wrinkled chin and trembling chest, and I can’t look at him when I continue speaking.

“...I came with you because I’m in love with the  _ idea _ of love. I’m in love with what we had, but… I know now that we’ve both changed. Nineteen years is too long… I had already gotten over you. I just… felt guilty for letting you go. For not running out of town with a one-way train ticket like they do in those stupid chick-flicks we used to make fun of. I never grew up from that day I watched you be taken away from me, and I…” I take a long, rattling breath before I realize that I, too, am crying tears that burn my throat, where I can still taste salt and sex and whisky. “I feel like I don’t know you, even after two days of just  _ talking _ with you… We’re not the same as we used to be, Jean, and I think… I think it would be best if we just accepted that and moved on with our lives.”

When I look up again, Jean is scrubbing at his eyes, pacing in a small circle before he sighs with the force of a gale, scratching viciously at his scalp. (I catch sight of a few prematurely gray roots.) It’s the look of a man in  _ panic _ … Panicked about losing the one thing he thought he had in this world.

But I can’t just  _ lie _ to him.

“I’m sorry, Jean, I should have thought--”

“No, no,” he huffs, voice shaking and breathless as he comes to a jerky halt, rubbing at his face before his hands bunch in the hem of his t-shirt.  “No,  _ I  _ should have thought,  _ fuck _ . Coming over in the middle of the night, not calling you beforehand… I didn’t even call out to you at the damn  _ store _ … I shouldn’t have assumed you would have waited that long for me. I should have found you sooner, I should have…” He crouches, hands burying in his hair as his elbows bump his knees. He doesn’t seem to care about the dirty state of the ground. “I fucked up, Marco, I’m  _ sorry _ \--”

I stand, awkwardly resting a hand on his shoulder.

“No, Jean… Stop blaming  _ yourself _ , for once. It’s me. I just… fell out of love with you. I figured you’d have found a wife…”

He shakes with sobs, stepping away from me and taking several deep breaths, standing straight and looking up at the sky as if that is where he will find his answers, written in the smog and gray clouds…

“I’m sorry, Jean,” I repeat, though I doubt the words have any effect.

“...Not your fault,” he sighs, turning to me with his hands in his back pockets. “Let’s just… get your stuff. I’ll pay your plane ticket home. I… won’t make you sit in a car with me again for that long.”

“Jean…”

He is not looking at me. I think he’s still crying, judging by the tightness in his voice.

“Just… Just c’mon, okay? This isn’t… This isn’t the place to talk about this.”

I do not argue, though I weakly follow that stranger’s back that is far too unfamiliar to me.

The walk back to the apartment is tedious. Maybe I’m already sobered out of panic, because it seems longer and I don’t stumble as much. But I don’t walk  _ beside _ Jean, rather, I walk behind him, my eyes on the crushed heels of his tennis shoes. We pass several other people on the walk, a foot traffic that I had been too blind to notice earlier. It makes me itch, makes me feel uncomfortable. I know, logically, no one is looking at me. No one cares. But it doesn’t stop the way I  _ feel _ judgemental stares… Some sort of paranoid sixth sense I had developed shortly after puberty and the word  _ gay _ came to be part of my twelve-year-old vocabulary. 

I feel uncomfortable in my own skin, ducking down to hide behind Jean, to hide within my clothes… And as soon as we’re out of public eye and back to the apartment, the itching discomfort changes to anxious nausea.

I know how break-ups are. They’re tears and choked sobs and “still be friend”s. I’ve seen enough chick flicks, heard enough griping from people I called friends going through them. Ben and Jerry’s, vodka, and a box of tissues, not necessarily in that order.

This is none of those things, but I feel the canyon between us yawning open, threatening to swallow me whole as the rockslide is no longer in my chest, but under my feet.

Jean stops in front of the couch, just  _ looking _ at it and the still-spilled whiskey. The room reeks of alcohol and sex and  _ regret _ , and his hands are clenched into tight fists, which he shoves into the pockets of his gray gingham pants.

He looks so  _ old _ .

“Why’d you come all this way, then?”

The words hurt like a slap. My eyes water, and I know I’ve been leading him on. I’ve been  _ dragging _ him ever since I opened my bedroom window and tried to be seventeen again. But, I tell myself, it’s logical. It’s logical that I don’t love him. It’s logical that I’ve already parted with the piece of my heart that I had embedded into him during an explosion of adolescence. 

I swallow my pride and take a step closer to the crumbling cliff, my back only inches from the door.

“...I’m sorry. I--”

“Just answer me.”

His words are not strong. They are not sharp, not quick. They are tired, they are old, they are nineteen years of suffering sorrow that make the room so very cold.

My hands shake. I clench them over my stomach, fisting my shirt as I fight the tremors and rising nausea. The butterflies no longer fluttering; now they’re  _ maggots _ , eating away at my body from the inside-out.

“...I thought, if I followed you, I’d be happy. I would get closure,” I whisper, my voice shaking just as badly as my hands. “I wasn’t  _ thinking _ , Jean. I was just so desperate… So desperate to get  _ close _ to you again. For things to be like they were… But we’ve changed. It’s been  _ nineteen _ years…”

My voice breaks. I cannot continue. Jean bows his head, eyes shut tight, dark lashes brushing his cheekbones… A bit sharper; more defined than they were in his younger years. But his face is still long, drawn out and heavy. He used to get teased, bullied… But there is no pride, still. He has not gained it through years of living. If anything, his esteem has been completely destroyed. He is tired. He is old.

“...Guess I’m the same,” he whispers to the deflated cushions, eyes still closed. “I never gave up on you, ‘cause I thought things wouldn’t change… I know it’s been so long, and it’s… stupid of me to’ve thought that we could just pick up where we left off…” He opens his eyes. I take a step forward and see a tear streaking his cheek. “I never even said  _ goodbye _ … I’m so fuckin’ sorry, Marco. I’ve been… I’ve been selfish. I never considered anything ‘cept you… wanting me.”

He takes a deep breath. He expels it with the force of a deflating cushion under the weight of too many regrets.

I take another step forward. And another. Until I’m within touching distance, though it still feels like miles that this canyon continues to spread.

“I’m sorry, Jean.”

Something in his spine snaps.

He’s suddenly rigid, whirling at me and shoving at me with open palms, amber eyes like spilled whiskey leaking on his face. He’s pale, jaw clenched, and his pupils are blown wide with emotion.

“Stop fuckin’ saying that!” he spits at me as I stumble back. He chases me. I’m scared. “Stop it! You shoulda just stayed in that damn town, if you never wanted out! I’m no knight in shinin’ armor, and you’re sure as shit no princess!”

I take so many steps backward that my spine hits the door.

He keeps coming, hands punching the door on either side of my head.

This is the part where his head drops to my chest and he sobs. He begs to have me back, and I’m so moved by his love and emotion that I take him back. That I  _ force _ myself to love him. This is the part of the story where the audience hushes their sobs, on the edge of their seats as  _ please kiss _ runs like a mantra through their heads. This is the part where the heroine and her hero make sweet, gentle love, with whiskey and emotions still smoldering in their hearts.

That does not happen.

We simply stare for a long, long moment. Me, searching the darkened skies of early dusk, and him, staring into dark brown and getting lost in a black hole.

_ Kiss! _ the audience screams.

Jean’s fist thuds against the door and he turns away sharply, pacing with fierce  _ purpose _ back to his room. The sound of the door slamming rattles the steel drum of the trash can and brings ripples to the puddle of whiskey.

I pretend I don’t hear him screaming at himself. I pretend I don’t hear him throwing things. I pretend I don’t hear him  _ sobbing _ .

I pretend that the overwhelming canyon between us is just a crack in the sidewalk where the butt of a cigarette is mashed.

I know it can’t be normal as I simply step to the counter, grabbing a roll of paper towel and numbly begin to dab up the mess we left. I don’t cry, I don’t sob, I don’t frown. My jaw is clenched, my mouth in a firm line, though my brow is unwrinkled and soft.

I knew it wouldn’t work out.

I toss away the soaked paper towels, and I dump the scarce remnants of the whiskey down the drain. I drop the bottle into the bin, listening to the muted sound of it hitting the cushion of paper towel and paper plates. I head to the room where I’ve left my things, quietly picking up the spread of my dirty clothes and dressing in jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt.

I knew I shouldn’t have come.

I sit on the futon after I shut the door, Jean’s noises of  _ distress _ muted. I should go comfort him. Talk to him. This is the part where we scream at each other before he pins me to the wall and takes my mouth in his and we have hurried sex against the drywall. This is the moment the crowd resumes their sobbing, praying for a happy ending despite the grim realities.

But this is not a movie. This is not a love story.

This is a story of growing old. Of growing apart, and accepting that time does not heal wounds, but rips them raw to let you bleed. This is not a happy ending; nothing that Disney movies in footed pajamas could have prepared me for. Nicholas Sparks had it all wrong; perhaps he’s just a delusional old man clinging to a love that’s two decades gone stale. Writers are poets, and poets twist and turn things to make them beautiful. Even Poe romanticized his own pain, spinning flowing words that chilled the heart but warmed the soul. Ravens can love, though humans… Nevermore.

I pull out my phone and turn it on again.

**3 MISSED CALLS 1 VOICE MAIL 7 TEXT MESSAGES**

I listen to the voicemail, and it makes me feel the way my feet slip on the tumbling rock.

“Marco, sweetie, it’s your mama again… Please call me. Me and your father are so worried about you, Marco,  _ please _ … That Eren boy you worked with let us know that he had heard from you, but he didn’t know anything… Please, baby, come home. I’m sorry, if it’s something I or your father did. I’m so sorry, Marco, baby… Please come home.”

_ “End of messages. To repeat this message, press--” _

I hang up. There are hot tears streaming down my face.

My mother has not cried since I was six years old and angry about something so  _ insignificant  _ that I had screamed that I hated her. She has not called me “sweetie” since I was ten and sick with the flu. She has not called me  _ baby _ since I was one.

And yet, instead of these things infuriating me with the sense of being treated like a child, they make me feel  _ loved _ .

There is a crash of glass, of a breaking mirror, and Jean is silent across the hall.

I read my texts, next. All of them are from Eren.

**ur a real piece o work bodt**

**fine wtevr i told ur mom i heard from u but nothin else**

**u have a lot of explaining to do**

**i kno u have ur phone fuckin answer**

**marco**

**marco**

**in all seriousness, i’ve been worried sick abt u. pls come back ok? even if its just to pack ur shit pls come back. at least say goodbye. dont pull this john green runaway bullshit**

I flinch when I hear a final choked sob from Jean’s room. The silence is deafening, and it only breaks with the sound of my fingers tapping out a reply.

**I’m sorry, Eren. I’m coming home** **_._ **

He must be sitting on his phone. Must be a slow day at work.

**dude seriously??? u gonna move back up w jean tho?**

I chew my lip. I taste salt, and after tugging at the chapped skin there, blood.

**No. It’s not working out. I was being stupid.**

Eren doesn’t reply for a moment, and I lay down and stare at the purplish ceiling. My phone vibrates against my chest, and I look down to see Eren’s reply.

**hell yeah u were. fuckin idiot. u need a ride home?**

I hesitate. I remember what Jean said about a plane ticket.

**Jean said he’d buy me a plane ticket. I’ll be fine.**

**ok no fuk that can i call u?**

I hesitate. I know Jean would be able to hear, if I can hear him from him. But why am I afraid of hurting him more? I’ve already shattered him.

I hit the call button next to his name and cradle the phone to my ear, turning onto my side and hugging my suitcase shut against my chest. Tears streak over the freckled bridge of my nose and I hear them drop dully to the pillow. Eren answers on the second ring.

“Dude, what the h--”

“I’m sorry, Eren.” I nearly  _ sob _ it.

He immediately quiets. I can hear wind at his end. I wonder where he is, or if he’s driving. There’s a beat of silence, as if he’s waiting for me, and I take it.

“I wasn’t thinking, okay? I was just… I was so ready to take him back. To pick up where we left off, but… I don’t love him anymore. I loved who he was, but… we’ve both changed. It’s been almost twenty goddamn years, and he’s been hung up on me for every day and I’ve made a living trying to forget him. I just… I don’t  _ love _ him.”

I end with a stifled sob, but I know Eren hears it. And if he doesn’t, he would hear it in the brittle shake of my voice.

“...It’s fine. I get it. You’ve been dying to get outta this town, Marco, I  _ know _ . You would’ve taken any chance you could’ve to get out. And I… I’m sorry it didn’t work. And I’m sorry for kinda… freaking out. Your parents thought you’d been abducted, with the way they found your window…”

I bite my cheek and give a little noise. A little confession of guilt.

“Look, I’ll pay for the plane ticket. I’ll meet you at the airport. Where are you?”

“...Indiana,” I say quietly. Almost ashamed.

“More specific?”

I take a breath. “Indianapolis…”

“Alright. I’ll order you a ticket back here and text it to you. Soonest flight. You sound like shit, Marco.”

I give a weak laugh that sounds like a sob. “Yeah. Feel like it.”

“Alright, man… I’ll call you later.”

“...Eren?”

“Yeah?”

I smile, and it hurts.

“Thanks… for everything.”

“Don’t get gay with me, Bodt.”

I scoff a laugh, but it’s genuine. “Sorry.”

I hang up after Eren reassures me that he’ll handle things, and I pocket my phone and grab my suitcase and knock timidly on Jean’s door.

It’s a long moment, though, without an answer, and I wonder if he’s asleep.

I wonder if he’ll emerge every bit the boy I knew. I wonder if he’ll sweep me into his arms and loudly declare that there are no parents to tell me what we can and can’t do. I wonder if I’ll simply wake up in a queen sized bed,  _ alone _ and gray and too old to do anything with my life.

The final option seems to be the most realistic.

I’m beginning to debate leaving a note stuck under his door before it opens, and Jean stands there. His eyes are red and puffed, though he isn’t crying anymore. I can see the chaos of his room behind him-- Broken mirror, scattered clothes, picture frames and knick-knacks scattered like dead, fallen leaves, only to be raked up and burned.

He closes his door, stepping into the hall with me. He looks to my eyes, to my suitcase, and back again.

“Marco…”

“Eren’s buying me a ticket,” I whisper, watching his face down the two inches that separates us in height.

“Oh,” he breathes, eyes wide as he tries to figure out who Eren is and why he’s buying me a ticket.

We exist in a frozen frame of time. We simply look at each other, me from a ledge against a rough cliff wall, and he from the watery bottom of the canyon that has been nineteen  _ hundred _ years in the making.

I know those eyes that pierce me through. I love those eyes that reminded me of amber hiding jewels, of the sun at twilight, of caramel apples shared behind a hay bale during a school’s fall festival.

I  _ loved _ them.

They remind me of nothing but cloudy whiskey and dusty roads, now.

“...Goodbye, Jean.”

It’s that easy.

It’s that easy to walk away from him. To walk away from nineteen years of anxious  _ agony _ . To walk away from years of crying and pining and working through the stages of grief over a boy that bumped noses with me during our first awkward kiss.

That easy to get over the man that brought me to tears after a lasagna dinner party.

Jean just gives an awkward “yeah” as he follows half a step behind me as I head towards the door. I pause there, my hand on the knob, unsure of what I’m supposed to say.

“For what it’s worth,” Jean whispers, eyes focused on my suitcase, as if trying to imagine himself curled up inside of it, “I’m sorry… and I love you, Marco.”

“...I loved you too, Jean,” I mourn, giving him a horribly forced smile before I step outside.

I wander the streets for a good chunk of time before Eren texts me my ticket and where to go, and I hail a cab to take me to my destination.

It’s an awkward ride, the cabbie speaking in quick quips slurred by a northern accent, and I just smile politely and hand him his payment as I step out to the airport.

My suitcase counts as a carry-on. I step through airport security barefoot, and my feet are cold.

But I’m not dreading. I’m not hesitant.

The plane trip is only two hours, a harsh correction from eleven hours of driving, and it only takes me two hours to figure out what to do.

I do not love Jean Kirchstein.

Jean Kirchstein does not love me.

We are in love with what used to be, and as I stare out of a small window to see Indianapolis fade into the smog and clouds, I feel thirty-seven and weightless.

This is not a love story. It never was. It’s a story of learning to let go, of learning that love is not as simple as caring for a person. Love can be affection towards memories, towards a thing you used to have, but let slip away. Love is possessing, obsessing, and making mistakes that you cannot fully understand until you have spent nearly twenty years thinking about a three year relationship with a boy that covered his insecurities in bleach and flannel.

I miss him. I really do. But I know that he is alive, he is well, and whiskey is but a motivator. I know that I do not love him, but the him of nineteen years ago. I know that that night when Hitch had called me, breathless, had broken my heart into sharp pieces that still hurt my numb, bleeding fingers when I try to touch them. But now, I can begin to wrap band-aids around them. I can take stock of my injuries and determine which pieces of my shattered heart are worth mourning over.

You can never put something like that back together again. I’m not stupid; I know that I may never truly get over him. I know I may lay awake some nights in an empty queen bed, wondering  _ what if _ s and thinking of rough stubble scratching my cheek as I tasted the fire of whiskey against lips I had missed for so long…

And, somewhere between the sky and the earth, I realize that I am thirty-seven and living with ghosts that have gotten too used to my presence to leave me now.

I land in the dark, and my mind is in so many different directions that I don’t pay attention to the time. Eren picks me up in his truck, though he’s frowning, loudly proclaiming as he sits behind exiting traffic that I look like shit.

“You wanna spend the night at my place? Your parents are gonna be one hell of a trip.”

And I smile, and it feels like my skin is cracking and breaking as I use the severed pieces of myself as stairs to exit the rocky cliffside I have found myself within.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’d… like that. Thanks, Eren.”

He smiles, and I pretend I don’t see the relief and gratefulness there as he turns onto the expressway to the small town I, unfortunately, call home.

And just like that, I am back where I was. I go to work in the morning, and Connie is still pushing his puppies on me, claiming I owe him at least that much for giving the entire town a scare with my absence. I reluctantly take one, knowing the golden fur and cuteness of a puppy will ease the wrath of my parents.

I leave work at five o’clock and Eren drops me off at home, slipping me a saran-wrapped plate of leftover chicken noodle casserole that Historia had made the night before. And it’s with that, my suitcase, and a puppy in my arms, that I head into my house and the jaws of death itself.

It’s mostly a  _ blur _ . I’m still exhausted, still  _ thinking _ about everything. Thinking about Jean, about me, about love and what it actually is. About the fact that I need to move out because Jean has already found me again and it wasn’t as romantic as I had imagined. I’m thinking about too much and my parents are too  _ smothering _ . My mother sobs, cradling me to her chest despite how  _ short _ she is compared to me, her cloud of silver hair frazzled from worry. My father’s eyes water, but he just slaps me on the back in thanks for returning, and as soon as they question me about where I went and why, I drop a puppy in the room and masterfully avoid it.

Life is simple, sometimes. A puppy and cooing at it.

But most of the time, it’s not. It’s tossing and turning for days after leaving the man you thought you loved, of replaying an awkward  _ goodbye _ in your head until the word doesn’t even sound English anymore. It’s turning gray before you’re forty, spending your thirty-eighth birthday handing in a resignation letter and buying an apartment in Mississauga after getting a job in the IT department of a hospital. It’s looking in your rearview mirror and expecting to see him there, heading in the other direction without looking back.

It’s feeling horribly empty and  _ alone,  _ a shoebox with a dried, wilted rose in the dredges of my closet in my new home, and a puppy pissing on the floorboards not enough to fill the empty spaces within my shattered self.

And I have become numb to it, by now. 

I suppose it must be what  _ giving up _ feels like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more chapter. a happy ending is still possible.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a 3-part series, but this is also the kind of fic that I need a mood to write. It's likely it won't update for a bit, but when it does, it will (hopefully) be worth it.


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